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We don’t really like to look at the down side of things, but we wanted to commiserate a bit with Armadillo Aerospace. In an attempt to win a prize of $350,000.00 in NASA’s X Prize Cup, their lunar lander module caught fire when launched in new Mexico. Fortunately, there were no injuries. This was their fourth attempt at the Level 1 challenge, in which a rocket must ascend 50 meters, move to another pad 100 meters away and stay there for 90 seconds. Total trip time must be within 150 minutes.

There is a total of $2 million up for grabs in the contest with its Level 2 which is designed to promote more capable space exploration vehicles, but Armadillo says they are done for the year. Here’s hoping they get back to the drawing board successfully.